“I have not the pleasure of the ‘Family Herald’s’ acquaintance,” I said, smiling genially, for she interested me as another variety of the genus American, “but tell me something of yourself. You are not a mountain girl, I infer.”
“Cheese it!” she exclaimed scornfully. “Do I look like these here lumps that is as broad as they is long and wear their hair as slick as a rat’s tail? Naw, I’m a Noo Yorker born and bred, and I’m a sales-lady in ——[A] See?”
“You mean—a—shop girl?”
“Naw. We don’t use that there kind of language in this country. This is the United States of Ameriky and we’re all free and equal.”
“Ah,” I exclaimed eagerly. “Do you really hold to that? How refreshing. Then you don’t look down on these mountain girls that usually have to work as servants?”
“Gee!” she exclaimed indignantly, “I guess I do. Servants is one thing and sales-ladies is another. And I ain’t never goin’ to the mountins agin for vacations—not while there’s cheap hotels at Asbury Park, and Ocean Grove. I ain’t used to settin at table with servants, or ‘hired help’ as they call themselves. But a lady frien’ of mine’s got an aunt up here and she giv me no peace till I come, I was that near dead with work and heat.”
If I were of an hysterical turn I probably should have succumbed. But I maintained a becoming gravity and looked at her with that concentrated interest which forces people to talk about themselves.
“But,” I said diffidently,—“as you have told me you work you won’t mind my alluding to it—suppose you had been less clever than you are or had had less influence than you did have—and had been forced to go out as a servant——”
“I’d ’a been a fluff first—naw, I don’t mean that. But I just wasn’t—that’s all. And I guess I ain’t goin’ to associate with those beneath me when I don’t have to. Wouldn’t I be a fool if I did?”
“You certainly would not be a good American. But if you call yourself ‘sales-lady’ why should not the poor servant be permitted to ease her self-respect by calling herself ‘hired help’?”